Good morning it's polling day...

Tory Bear's bastard postal vote went to a flat he lived in two years ago. For the love of god please go vote for change.

Anyone fancy a curry?

Much better than anything Tom Watson ever wrote.

Postman Prat

A while back TB said he was praying that CCHQ were war-gaming how to defeat Alan Johnson. Well the good news is that

ConservativeHome

are tonight reporting some of that strategy is starting to come together. The bad news is that it might actually have to be used.

While TB can't wait to see Brown dragged kicking and screaming from Number 10 for the good of the country, the Tories will face a much tougher battle against the lovable postie.

Unless of course that little skeleton in the cupboard caused some real damage?

In the meantime there is some cheer from Nick Boles: "However personally appealing Alan Johnson may be, he cannot at this late stage repair the deep fissures in the Labour Party or offer the British people real change from the failed approach of the last decade."

Bring it on.

Exclusive: Britain can't afford another year of Labour

Tell him Sarah...

Isn't it about time someone told Gordon it's curtains?

Woof.

You wouldn't think it given the behaviour of certain Cabinet Ministers today, but there's an election on don't you know. Across the country the final blitz's are happening. With every leaflet drop comes great peril. It's a hard life for some hacks. Take Tory blogger

James Burdett

who didn't do too well with a large dog, his fingers and letterbox:

Can anyone out there beat that?

UPDATE 00:17: Yes apparently they can - The (very nicely) newly redesgined

ThunderDragon blog

reports:

Luckily, I didn’t put my whole hand through the letterbox, and all the dog bit was the tip of my finger as I pushed the leaflet through. Painful and rather bloody, but nothing worse than that.

Unfortunately, at the time I had no first aid kit on me or even in my car, so I ended up wrapping my finger in one my leaflets to try and staunch the blood. Of course, I didn’t let that stop me leafleting and continued until I had completed the area.

Ouch.

+++Blears on the run+++

Seems Hazel Blears needed a police escort for her own protection as she boarded a train back to chipmonk land.

Presumably they were there to block incoming Nokias...

UPDATE 15.27:

Dizzy

has gone on the attack, suggesting that NO10 are attempting to trash Blears' reputation.

Guido

argues that Andrew Porter and the Telegraph have learnt nothing since Smeargate. Winding up the Chipmunk further would be a prep school error from Brown.

She is going to snap.

Quote of the Day:

"I think Labour backbenchers feel under the cosh... they are nervous... last thing any MP wants is General Election".

-Mandy

What a tool.

Hat-Tip: SkyNew's

@cherylsmith

Lord Baldamort...

Liam Bryne didn't get off to the best of starts in his role a Cabinet Officer Minister when the details of a memo he wrote for staff called "Working for Liam Bryne" was leaked. Cue much hilarity about this anal little man's desire for soup, coffees and salads on the hour and to minute precision.

He came to the forefront of public anger during the Smeargate scandal when he was put on the television to defend Gordon and co. Bryne is very good at lying through his teeth and gives the impression of being totally and utterly deluded. He has been back on the airwaves today defending Gordon and trying to suggest that these resignations are due to the expenses scandal and not a timed attack on his dear boss.

Watson knew it was over - hence why he went yesterday. Bryne can cling on to the end though - he doesn't have to rush back to his seat to rescue his post government career - Bryne is sitting on a ten thousand majority. He can afford to stay right to the end of the swan song. He is making himself look like a fool though.

There is no way he really can believe what he is spouting. He said the Prime Minister would be continuing with “wide-ranging and ambitious plans to accelerate our recovery” over the next few weeks, and added that it is important that he has the team he wants behind him. On the resignation of Hazel Blears he said: “I don’t think it’s a real surprise that in the current environment – that some people take quite personal decisions about what they want to do next. “It’s not a surprise when the media puts people under such pressure that people take these personal decisions. I’m not criticising the media in any way, it’s simply an observation."

It's just lies and spin. Blears would have gone weeks ago if she hadn't thought she could survive the expenses scandal. It was Gordon's behaviour and leadership style that drove her out and for Bryne to go on TV and suggest otherwise is a lie. Liam Bryne should take a long hard look in the mirror.

As Nan would say - "What a load of old shiiite."

Quotes -

PoliticsHome

Will Flint be next?

To lose one cabinet minister may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose three looks like carelessness... But who is next? Caroline Flint is a name being thrown around.

A lot.

Three down...many to go.

The official orders from the bunker seem to that the line to take is that the expenses system has wounded all parties blah blah blah and this is a crisis for politics not the Labour Party. Gordon tried it at PMQs and now Mandy and co are doing the TV rounds with it now. 

John Sopal on the BBC is giving Mandy a pretty hard time, the lines aren't going wash... Mandy also just the audacity to have a go at Dave's mortgages. Ummm collective amnesia all round it seems. Pot. Kettle. Black. 

Blunkett - another formerly disgraced minister is also doing the rounds, proof Gordo could be about to bring him back in the reshuffle. 

Welcome to the end Ladies and Gentlemen.

The Grauniad strikes again...

Yesterday they endorsed the Lib Dems and today they might just have signed Gordon's death warrant for all those irritating muesli chomping lefty types by

calling for his head

.

Shame they still don't have a basic grasp of the English language though.

Hat-Tip -

Lord Elvis

Gordon admits it's over?

As TB left the house this morning he thought "should the laptop and dongle come too?"

Naaah what's going to happen...? Oh how wrong he was.

After a some beers and a burger in the sunshine with Guido and a few others, the news started to break that Jacqui was a gonna. TB was tied up all afternoon interviewing a rather interesting young lady - watch this space - and then after paying a visit to the Red Lion, showed up for the tail end of the Carlton Club Kiddies drinks. After a mad dash back to the country he is only now finally catching up on what must have been the worst day for the Labour Party since, well, TB isn't sure when. The icing on the cake has to be the resignation of "proppah blogga" and general pillock Tom Watson too.

Much to report from Tuesday, bit of sleep required first. In the mean time TB can offer you some rather interesting footage of what happened tonight when Gordon hit that bottle of Famous Grouse he keeps in the desk drawer...



Interview, rumours and TB's choice for Speaker will all be revealed tomorrow.

A look at the Future...

So here we are, the final furlong of Gordon’s first real electoral test. Up and down the country leaflets are being stuffed through letterboxes, no doubt canvassers are avoiding pitchforks and burning torch bearing mobs in certain constituencies, but it seems the Tories will prevail. If the propaganda being put out on the

Conservative Future website

is to be believed, the dress rehearsal is going swimmingly and CF is ready for the General Election.

But is that really the case?

Depending on who you talk to, CF is apparently the strongest it’s ever been or totally and utterly dead, over, done. There is no doubt that the profile of the organisation is improving. There is finally a website that should have been in place years ago, it's informative and regularly updated and runs rings around anything put forward by the equivalent youth movements of the other parties. Membership is apparently on the increase from campuses and branches around the country. The Dave appeal is really working and in the last few years TB has been able to strut around, head held high, as a Tory, without having rocks thrown at him. But is this just a reflection of the momentum behind the national party or proof that Conservative Future is really making the inroads it should be at this stage in the electoral cycle?

When a youth wing of the Party was first created in 1946/47 it was with the sole intention of creating a streamlined and effective campaigning force that would see the Tories returned to power. It achieved this within five years, but things started to go wrong when it became overtly social or overtly politicised. We should be focussing on one thing and one thing only, and that is winning the General Election. The powers that be have assured TB that CF is ready and that at the drop of a hat the ground troops will be ready to serve. Rather worrying though is the recent decline in the numbers attending national campaign days. Apparently the strategy has changed. Instead of having big campaign days where people from across the country come together to blitz one target seat, local and regional campaign days are apparently now the way forward. In terms of numbers though, it is increasingly worrying to see events that a few years back would have had seventy or eighty activists trundling the streets all day, now attended by twenty or thirty people.

Has CF become too distracted by other things beside the hard work of the campaign trail? Events like media training cannot do any harm and are much needed in some cases, and while everyone loves a good knees up, there does seem to be a drop in the actual number of leaflets being put through doors. It isn’t all bad news though, this week has seen hundreds of people out and about helping the cause, but if that wasn’t happening the weekend before an election then CF really would be in trouble. One thing is for sure though, CF as a campaigning brand has taken a hit. No longer is it CF campaign days, instead its younger members of the Party going out and about with senior members, all hands to the deck. Some may argue that this is a good thing. Why should there be this perpetual focus on the organisation when at the end of the day someone who is forty wants to see a Conservative government just as much as someone who is eighteen? More probably.

One place that CF has grown in the last few months though is online. As mentioned earlier the website is now fully functional, with video and interviews with DC etc. While the main party website has some what tellingly not linked to it yet, it is vastly improved and a good hub for any young member to start online. Local branch websites have also greatly improved through the Rock manifesto promise of free blog platforms.

Birmingham Conservative Future

and the

North West regional blog

are leading lights in the online fight. Although some good coverage has come out of this cyber battle – particularly Michael Rock’s

recent piece

about the true place on the political compass of the BNP, it would be foolish to believe that while the internet will be important at the next election, it will be won solely online.

So what has been going on behind the scenes? While a brief glance at the news section of the CF website would lead you to think everything was hunky dory, the last few months have seen the inevitable blood and tears. Another leading activist was expelled after

allegedly wearing a Hitler moustache to a party

– a claim that the accused former Birmingham head honcho Dan O’Doherty vehemently denied. It was telling that the Mirror, although clearly having the picture, did not publish it, as it would have apparently weakened the story. That wasn’t good enough for CCHQ who having set a precedent with former, slightly err more high profile cases, were quick to move and expel O’Doherty. Punishment was swift for York chairman Ralph Buckle too, for the much lesser misdemeanour of dressing up as Lord Tebbit.

So while misbehaviour gets attention, the backroom antics and “politics” of CF often very intentionally goes under the radar. While TB has been somewhat out of the loop for the last few months, there have been some interesting questions raised by the recent re-jigging of roles under taken by various members of the National Executive. Since the Rock administration had its term extended indefinitely, a quarter of original executive have now quit and another two are definitely showing signs of losing interest/patience/the will to live. The decision by CCHQ to put off a CF election, while understandable given the expense and tendency to end up in a bit of a mess, has not gone down well with the members, or the current exec it seems. There are reports of fatigue and a general loss of interest, hence why it is of no surprise to see two of the weaker members of the original line up already gone and rumours coming in thick and fast that Adele Douglas and Steve Ricketts are openly considering their positions. Loyal Christian May is helping the cause further a field through his work with

YBF

, and other than some recent radio appearances hasn’t been making the same impact he once did in the CF world. This leaves an interesting power quartet pulling the strings of the organisation in the shape of Chairman Michael Rock, his loyal co-option Richard Jackson, new kid on the exec block Edward Hallam and of course, CF’s finest drinker Patrick Sullivan. This was the backbone of the Rock campaign team, yet only Sullivan was originally elected to the executive… sniff sniff.

The CF constitution states very clearly (TB would like to link to it but it has been removed from the website,) that the Chairman is allowed three co-options in the course of his tenure. Jackson was taken on immediately without voting rights in order to handle the communication side of things. Hallam’s recent promotion, from no where to National Campaigns coordinator, is slightly murkier though. As far as TB can ascertain, when former campaigns honcho Sullivan broke his arm and was out of action for six weeks, Hallam, a long time supporter and close personal friend of Rock, stood in, upon Sullivan’s recommendation, in the campaigns role. At the end of the six weeks Rock cut a deal with Sullivan to see Hallam co-opted onto the executive full time as campaigns guru in return for Sullivan having full control of the students and universities portfolio. This hasn’t been greeted with universal support and certain executive members are up in arms about whether the whole move is even constitutional. There is meant to be a vote by simple majority for a co-option.

Problem is there hasn’t been an Exec meeting in over six months.

One senior member of the exec told TB last night that this isn’t really a problem and if anything, more gets done without the meetings which tend to bring rather large egos together and are often messy and counter productive. Hallam is a formidable campaigner and looks set crank things up a notch in the run up the General. It would therefore be a shame if he was to be tainted with controversy. A statement of some sort needs to be put out clarifying exactly how the decision to have him co-opted was reached. TB can see no problem with the co-option, but like so many things in the last year or so in the CF world, the end result is often sullied by the ways and means in which it was achieved. Reforms. Cough. Another thing to consider is the fact that National Campaigns is an extremely important portfolio, arguably second only to Chairman. Hallam is bastion of soundness but will need to be much more “mainstream” in his role. For example

posting an interview

with the Chairman of UKIP Youth in the week before the European elections has led some eyebrows to be raised. Ed is also apparently standing for re-election of the flagship Cities of London and Westminster Conservative Future branch. Some might suggest that coordinating the entire CF election campaign would be a full time job but hey.

So even after a quite significant break down in communications and relations between Sullivan and Michael Rock/Jackson over the reforms, it seems that hatchets have been buried and it’s these four who will be responsible for the entire success, or failure, of the CF General Election campaign. Planning needs to have started months ago and high profile media stunts need to be ready to be put into action, right across the country with less than an hours notice. There is a possibility of the General Election happening this summer and despite whatever assurances are given from the top, TB has spoken to branches and members around the country who are not convinced that things are quite as ready as they could be.

In looking back over the last few months, it is impossible not to then look forward to the future of Conservative Future. Touch wood in less than ten months the Conservative Party will be in power, what then for its youth division? First things first - an internal election. TB spoke to Eric Pickles at Scottish Conference, and lets just say the prospect of holding an election before the General didn’t go down well and it was made very clear – it’s not going to happen. The argument that perhaps a little revitalisation at the top might help the election efforts fell on deaf ears. This won’t go down well with everyone but there is seemingly very little your average CF Joe can do about it. We all want a Tory government and don’t want to do anything to jeopardise that. That rules a strike out then. One thing that has to change though is the treatment that CF receives from the senior party. It is treated with a combination of disdain and impatience by many. You don’t hear many complaints when ten activists do an entire estate in a couple of hours though. CF needs fixed terms, and real fixed terms for its executive and it needs full control over its budget. Only then will the executive have the power to drive through real changes that the organisation needs and be fully accountable to the membership every twelve months.

There is a hell of a long way to go before we get to that stage though. Enough of the navel gazing – Conservative Future has done enough of that in the last year. The reforms, though brutal in their instigation are beginning to shine and now we have the serious hard work to do. The faces we have now are the faces that will run the General Election campaign, and like it or not, CF members must throw their full weight behind this team. The executive need to put past differences and petty battles behind them and fall into place as a streamlined unit.

So that’s what’s going on in the CF world. In case you were wondering.

A sign of things to come?

The Guardian

has this morning endorsed the dead ducks:

"The case for supporting the Liberal Democrats is now very strong. Anyone who believes Britain should be an engaged member of the European Union - who does not believe scare stories about the Lisbon treaty and who wants to back a party that campaigns on this - should vote Lib Dem. So should anyone who cares about constitutional renewal. Nick Clegg's party has ancestral roots in the battle to establish democracy, and its radical ideas stand in uplifting contrast to Labour's still too cautious agenda. The higher the Lib Dem vote, the more progressive plans for political renewal will be shown to have popular backing. People should remember, too, that on two other great crises - the debt-driven collapse of high finance and climate change - the Lib Dems led the way."

Yet another low for Labour:

"It is hard to find the same enthusiasm for Labour's campaign. Indeed, it is hard to tell what Labour stands for at all in this contest, except the repeated claim on its website that a Conservative government would be worse. That evades the progressive issues of the moment, and also the point of a European election. The party has forgotten how to be positive. Without an agenda for the future, it will not win on the past."

In other news it seems The Sun, a newspaper that actually has influence, is

fully on board

the Dave wagon. Hurrah.

Tweet o'the Day

@

torybear

 when I was young and a YC, we achieved nothing. Nick Robinson was our chairman. CF has made itself a force. Write about that!

  

graemearcher

Navel gazing..

TB feels he has neglected his home patch recently and will be writing a sort of "state of play" post tonight about Conservative Future, where we  are at now, what can be done better and what has been going on in the last few months. This blog was originally set up to keep a critical eye on the organisation but that seems to have expanded to a broader look at youth and mainstream British politics. That's not to say that TB doesn't have one or two things that need a full and frank discussion...

A few events, rumours and conversations have triggered this but TB was wondering if there was anything anyone out there wanted to get off their chest or would like to see included in the post?

Statporn: May 2009

Traffic was down this month, which no doubt had something to do with TB sitting finals and the two weeks of hedonistic carnage that followed. The Nick Brown Twitter story was the big fish:

55,523 pageviews from 40,772 vists.

Top 5 stories for the month were:

• Was it really Nick Brown on Twitter?
• Sadiq Khan's epic fail.
• Who is Tory Bear?
• John Bercow not wanted here.
• Commando Douglas.

As ever a massive thank you to you all.

Looking for a fun job?

Tory Bear's man in Cowley Street has informed him that applications to be the

ringmaster of Liberal Youth

haven't exactly been overwhelming. "Good rapport" must be the understatement of the century. It will take the patience of a saint to deal with Bagshaw and co when they throw their toys out of the pram. "Effective communication skills"? Yeah good luck spinning the messes they seem to thrive on creating.

Hopefully whoever they find won't leave describing the job as a "belittling and unpleasant experience" like the last chap did...

I'm sorry Darling, it's over.

Looks like Brown will have a pretty watertight excuse to fire Alastair Darling and replace him with Ed Balls on Friday. The Telegraph have

focused on him

again in Monday's edition and it's not looking too good. As

James Forsyth

observed, Vince Cable was spot on with his damnation of Darling on Sunday:

"Here is the company finance director caught with his fingers in the till. He doesn’t explain. He doesn’t apologise. He just blames his colleagues for not stopping him. His moral authority has vanished. He must go, now."

This is the first time that TB has ever agreed with something said by the massively over rated and really rather sad Vince Cable. Perhaps if old Vince had remained in the Labour Party, they wouldn't be in the mess they are now.

So the path is clear for Balls. Let the games begin.